|
|
|
MR 25.03.08 - Rangers v Almonds |
|
|
|
|
Match Report: Tuesday 25th March – Rangers v Almonds Never mind “never start with a 7”, you should never start with a hope you’re going to have an easy match! As soon as it became known that Conspiracy Pete had done a stock take of our games & enlightened us all with the fact that we hadn’t lost one this year, we were doomed. With a sense of foreboding, Craptain told Pete that if we lost after that bit of fate tempting it would definitely be his fault – maybe we should dock him a few pins from his average! We didn’t have the pleasure of Barnesy’s company on Tuesday for our match against Rangers at their home alley, Little Stoke Social Club. Nor did we see Taffy, Barnesy Junior or Lodge, all presumably submitting appropriate notes from their parents. Craptain picked MiniDisk & Wiggle to get the balls warmed up – & we started the game as it was destined to go on. MiniDisk got off to a cracking start with a 7… but his wheels wobbled savagely after that until a flourish of brilliance on his 5th up resulted in him having some semblance of a decent score before his last up, & after securing himself some more pins at the last he finished up on a decent enough 20. Wiggle put in a more even performance, but sadly never rose above mediocrity & despite managing to avoid any dcuks only put 19 on the board. 8 down at the outset, Craptain chalked up Turk & Jocky. As luck would have it, Rangers either didn’t see or couldn’t care about the near foul shots Turk sent down the alley, but even shortening the distance his balls had to travel didn’t help his score & he finished up just into double figures with 11. Jocky did twice as well, scoring 22 with no dcuks, causing Orical to clean his glasses to make sure it really was Jocky up there not putting a foot wrong! As Jocky took his stroke of Pussy with pride, 17 more pins were added to the Rangers tally, leaving us 25 down & Craptain putting the dynamic duo of Compact & peRV on in the hopes their competitive spirits worked against one another to produce some blistering action. The only blistering came from Craptain’s hands as he rubbed them together in nervous tension! Compact’s run of ‘struggling’ continued as even when he did find the target he didn’t get any luck with taking out more than one pin at a time. He finished up taking a dozen pins, which perked up Orical’s interest as he realised that might mean catching Compact up in the Averages: apparently Orical has given up on seeing his name in pink at the top of the Averages & is settling for taking an Australian view on things – looking at them upside down!! peRV didn’t sparkle either, faring only a little better with 16. We were now looking at being 37 pins down on the game at half time, prompting Craptain to play Orical & aRCe together, challenging them with halting the downward spiral – or else! Having started with a dcuk, Orical had an 8 on his 2nd up & Sparky starting fizzing with the prospect that it could be the start of something big. Compared to his last couple of scores the 25 he finished up with was big, & did mean that he pulled 6 pins on his oppo. Hammer, meanwhile, was bigging aRCe up by saying he was going to turn our fortunes around because he’d been on form lately. This resulted in aRCe putting his first ball straight through… & despite quite openly doing drugs before he performed, aRCe was unable to secure more than a 20, which matched his oppo & meant that the pair had indeed done Craptain’s bidding & stopped our fall. 31 pins down now, Hammer received his 21st cap, playing alongside a resigned Craptain. Hammer, who turned up in the same garb as last week, which even his own daughter declared made him look like a hobo, was full of predictions this week. I couldn’t see that ‘predictions’ meant the same as ‘shit’ in the thesaurus, but perhaps it was an oversight. aRCe tried to give Hammer some motivation by telling him that if he didn’t get a 30 he wouldn’t take him to the Horse of the Year show. This proved to be a stroke of genius, Hammer pounding his way to a 31 – the only 30 of the evening on either side is worth mentioning – but raises grave concerns over just how far Hammer’s horse obsession has gone. Following his own less than inspiring 15, which meant we pulled back a whole 2 pins to leave the ‘ankers with 29 to pull back for a draw – 30 for a win! – Craptain rallied the troops by saying that as pre-‘ankers he & Hammer had broken the back of the deficit by bring it down under 30. Hammer, however, was only interested in blowing his own trumpet & drawing attention to a Ranger whom he thought looked just like a guy out of Honey I Shrunk the Kids. This caused a few moments of amused distraction as Craptain thought he’d said Honey I Shot the Kids & that he’d missed seeing that particular Disney sequel. With Jocky & Orical taking great pleasure in every bad ball the Rangers threw, after a couple of dcuks from their side it did start to look like we might achieve the impossible & snatch a win. Craptain said he wasn’t allowing himself to think we might steal the victory, but it didn’t stop him or the rest of the Boys working out the Math after each up to keep track! Jocky was impressed when he had it explained to him that one of our ‘experts’ hadn’t actually missed the Quarter, but had intentionally gone for the Copper knowing it would twizzle randomly & take out another pin on its fluke journey across the alley – conferring with Orical he acknowledged his rookie mistake, realising that as a mere mortal skittler he wouldn’t have been able to work that particular shot out!! With the sticker-up trying to throw us a curve by standing the front pin on the Quarter spot after one re-set – Craptain seemed quite pleased to think that the opposition are reduced to employing all sorts of tactics to beat us! – we continued to make a game of it to the bitter end, Sparky taking down 26 pins & Chuckles 28, pulling back 15 pins to leave us losing gracefully by 14 rather than having been soundly thrashed! The Rangers Captain came across after the game to collect the names & our Craptain’s signature, & a few minutes pleasant conversation was to be had establishing where we were in the League – it would appear that not all teams follow their progress as avidly as we do! – & having discovered we were League Leaders his face was wreathed in smiles as he said his team always plays better against class: he probably thought it would take the sting out of our loss to be so complimented – think again Ranger!! Turk & peRV both managed to leave without paying Subs, so face debt collection at our next game on Tuesday 1st April against the Bohemians on our home alley.
|
|
Home 
Latest Reports